


The Gift of the Med-jai

by UrbanAmazon



Category: The Mummy (1999), The Mummy Series
Genre: Banter, Eavesdropping, Friendship, Gen, Happy Ending, ardeth needs more friends, mention of past canon character deaths, mixed feels about christmas and other winter holidays, took a few liberties with unclear canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2020-12-17
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:22:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28127574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UrbanAmazon/pseuds/UrbanAmazon
Summary: Lesser-known in Christmas tales is the story of the one wise man, who showed up a few days early, bearing a gift.  Set about one year after the events of The Mummy.
Relationships: Evy Carnahan O'Connell/Rick O'Connell (background)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 35
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	The Gift of the Med-jai

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Nemainofthewater](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nemainofthewater/gifts).



_December 21, 1927 - Cairo_

  
  
  


Perhaps it was merely a completely justified sense of pessimism. Perhaps it had something to do with over a hundred generations of servitude to the will and memory of Seti I, to the point that he did not know any other way to live. Perhaps it was neither, but all the same Ardeth Bay kept to the shadows of Cairo as they lengthened with dusk. He listened for a stillness in the air that was _too_ still, and his sword still waited ready at his hip. 

There was always something out there, under the sand; the Med-jai would always remain ready to meet it. 

But it wasn’t here _yet_ , was the important thing; if Ardeth had learned anything from the events of the previous year, it was to never take for granted the little moments of peace in a dangerous and fragile life… and the friends he could spend them with. It was not that Ardeth did not have _friends_ amongst the Med-jai; he did, certainly, surely, yes, such a ridiculous question. That said, he was a leader to them first and foremost, and was looked to for orders more than for company. As the weeks and months had sifted past like so much sand over the dunes, Ardeth found himself coming to the rather awkward realization that he held casual conversations with his horse more than with his fellow warriors. 

So here he was.

If anyone were to ask what brought him into the city, he could honestly reply that there was strategic value in maintaining connections to other allies that had proven themselves to be resourceful and steadfast in times of trouble… and, possibly, even greater value in at least keeping track of where they were, in case Evelyn Carnahan found the trouble first. 

Though it was Evelyn O’Connell, now, if Ardeth’s scouts had reported correctly; whether Rick O’Connell proved to be a tempering or exacerbating influence on her tendencies remained to be seen.

It was not so oppressively hot this close to the Nile, a ghost of what used to be the harvesting season for the river-flooded farmlands, thousands of years past. Despite the hour of early evening, the sun was already gone below the horizon and the sonorous echoes of the _adhan_ had only just faded away; after this night, the sun would begin reclaiming the sky for longer and longer increments. The Egyptian Museum loomed tall and perfectly quiet as Ardeth passed it by, nothing stirring in its displays or archives (so far), despite the enthusiasm of its newly-installed curator. He turned east, through the glut of embassies and diplomatic agency buildings that tangled the sector of Cairo called Qasr El Nîl. By the time he passed the Roman Catholic church - Saint Joseph’s - on Shâri Imâd el Dîn, the night had wrapped the city in full darkness, though the church’s windows gleamed with welcoming candlelight. Ardeth remembered, somewhat sadly, when the church had been new, nearly twenty years previous; all of the construction had provided easy cover when he’d been assigned the chore of reporting to Dr. Bey, then only a professor at the newly founded Egyptian University. He remembered learning fragments of Italian from listening to the workers, on top of the dialects of English, and Danish, and French lining Cairo’s streets. So many new languages and faces, crowding into Egypt from all directions. 

A sign at Saint Joseph’s front gate promised Christmas mass in the coming days. Ardeth was reasonably sure that between London and Cairo, the Carnahan family had been raised closer to atheist as opposed to Catholic, Sunni, or even Coptic - a blatant disregard for funerary practices certainly ran in their bloodline - and despite having survived a great number of miraculous circumstances, O’Connell’s approach to faith had seemed to be a grudging acknowledgement of the concept more than belief. Still, being the shortest day of the year, that night was already a holiday, not that many residents of Egypt that still recognized the winter solstice (to be truthful, nor did the Med-jai). The streets seemed to be calmer than the last time Ardeth had come to Cairo, at least. He heard a few murmurs of _Eid Milad Majid_ , as opposed to _Im-ho-tep_ , which was... nice. 

He crossed one last street as soundlessly a hawk, to the home of pale stone blocks and a heavy wooden door on Shâri Muḥammad--

Ah. Directly down the street from a bookstore. Because of course it was. 

The house was not old, not by any standard used with a straight face in Egypt, and notably less grand than many of the townhouses and villas that had proliferated along Cairo’s paved streets, but through the front-facing window, Ardeth felt he was looking into a museum. Bookshelves had been stacked thickly along the walls and bracketing the windows, every shelf groaning with the weight of sizeable hardbacks and tightly bound sheafs. Any walls remaining had been all but covered with an uncountable number of pictures, maps, and artefacts hanging on little hooks like a most bizarre mosaic. Side-tables and hall tables narrowed what little space remained, themselves each bearing at least two objects apiece; masks, bits of pottery, jewellery, a jackal skull, a sizable beetle specimen on a pin, and a… a flintlock gun? The smaller window to the left of the front door showed a small office through the breaks in the curtains, sporting a writing desk well-piled with papers and correspondence. The dining room beyond had a table with no dishes but a long, scarlet covering cloth, with intricate scallops of lace along the edges. It was tidy home, if dense. 

It was also a home that Ardeth had technically not been invited into, but that wasn’t really a concern Ardeth had much practice with. Perhaps it truly was an irrevocable trait at this point; he caught himself looking critically at the front window, at its age and how much dust might be muffling the hinges and latch. He frowned also at the office window left open to the cooling night air, another vulnerable point of entry--

 _No._ He’d at least parted with these people as friends, a little over a year past, and he was not on any holy mission (at least for the moment). Breaking in would not do. 

Ardeth wondered just how he was meant to knock. He got as far as lifting his hand, but was cut short by a familiar noise from further within the house - a seething _ooooh_ that oozed righteous fury, almost, but not quite, like the sound of the restless dead. 

“-you rather I held onto it until Christmas Day? Because I think you’ve made it clear that I would have ruined everything _then_ if I had.”

“I would rather you’d not brought it back at all, Jonathan!” 

“I thought you might like it, Evy!”

“Like it? _Like it_? Jonathan, this is a _farce_! It’s bad enough that I have to… to _claw_ my way up through the utter wall of scorn that is Bembridge scholars - constantly! - but now I have to deal with this… self-centered, ridiculous _hokum_ getting out into the general public! From _Cambridge_ , of all places!” Something papery was slapped into an unyielding surface. “Edward Budge is a _menace_!” 

Perhaps it was irrevocable habit, or pessimism, or perhaps it was a slight bit of self-preservation in wanting to make sure another Carnahan _hadn’t_ found fresh trouble before putting himself in the middle of it. Perhaps it was a combination of all three. In any case, Ardeth took one half-step to the side of the main door, directly into the shadow cast below the office window’s sill, and listened.

“Ah, could _one of you_ at least explain to me why this newspaper has got you so riled up?” Rick O’Connell sounded well enough, or at least as close to well as Ardeth remembered. The sound of paper against fingertips rustled dryly. “ _Cambridge Sentinel_... ‘Christmas, an International Holiday’ by Elmo Scott Watson. I’m sorry, but I’m lost here. Why were you in Cambridge?”

Evelyn let out a long sigh. Ardeth saw the curtain move slightly above his head and held his breath. “Our father attended Cambridge University. A long time ago.”

"Oh, _that_ Cambridge," said Rick. 

“As did I,” Jonathan put in indignantly. “You broke tradition, going to Oxford.”

Evelyn scoffed. “ _You_ broke tradition first. You barely finished one year.”

“I didn’t graduate, but I still went, thank you. Before I left London, I took a day trip up to Cambridge to visit one of our father’s old friends. I got the newspaper to read on the way home, saw the article, and I thought you might enjoy it, too. That’s _all_. I even paid for it and everything.”

“Oh, I’m not mad at _you_ , Jonathan.”

“Well, you’re certainly putting on a good show of it!”

“It’s the article!”

“Let me look at this.” There was a creak of wood, as if a body had been made to lean against a heavy desk or into a chair. The paper rustled some more “ _It is a curious fact, too, that associated with this “Christian holiday” are many symbols and traditions of pagan origin--”_

Evelyn interrupted O’Connell’s reading with another furious _‘ooooooh_ ’. 

“... _December 25th… birthday_ … uh, _historic background for that date is the earliest period In the history of mankind, dating as it does from the time when primitive man first began to recognize the phenomena of the changing seasons…_ _one of these was the winter solstice on December 21st which was observed with festivity in Persia, China,_ _and Egypt in ancient times._ ” There was a pause. “Is this something I’m going to regret reading out loud?”

“It’s a _newspaper_ , Rick.”

“A newspaper is like a book.”

“It was the _one_ time.” But there was fondness in Evelyn’s exasperation, and Ardeth was not the slightest bit surprised. 

“Technically, there were _two_ books,” Jonathan added, but O’Connell was reading again.

 _“_ Ah… _something of an analogy in the Egyptian celebration of the winter solstice and the Christian celebration of Christmas in honor of the Christ child--_ ”

“ _Ooooh!_ ”

“Oh, Evy, stop it! You sound like a camel!”

“ _Jonathan!_ ”

“Well, you do!”

“ _You_ stop it!”

“Until you tell us what’s got you in such a complete fit and cursing Sir Budge over a perfectly benign Christmas article, I don’t think I will!”

It was at this point that Ardeth began to consider the wisdom of a tactical retreat. Though he did consider O’Connell and the Carnahans to be his friends, this clearly wasn’t the best of times. Unfortunately, another glance upward only confirmed that Jonathan was now leaning sideways against the open window’s pane, his gangly elbow not six inches from Ardeth’s head. Retreat was not possible.

“Do you… have something against Christmas?” O’Connell tried gingerly. 

“ _No_ , no,” Evelyn insisted, but her voice had gone from indignant to soft in the space of a syllable. “It’s… Christmas was always one of the holidays that we always had, whether we were back in London or here in Cairo, or at school. I mean, yes, certainly, it was different when we were in London with our grandparents. Louder. All the… the bustle of relatives and carols and meals, and gifts. A tree in the library. Every room smelling like wassail.” She let out a wistful noise. “Did you have Christmases like that, Rick?” 

“Well I knew _of_ them, but the orphanage wasn’t much for _celebrating_ holidays when I was a kid. I learned more about Christmas and Kiahk and Ramadan and such from the men in the Legion than I did from the nuns.” O’Connell made an amused noise. “The nuns _definitely_ weren’t in any holiday spirit when I came home with a tattoo that one time.”

Jonathan choked slightly on a beverage and spluttered above Ardeth’s head. “Hang on, O’Connell, _you_ have a--”

“Well, Father’s family was Catholic, but he wasn’t very strict on following it. And when we were in Egypt, Mum wasn’t very Sunni, either. We never went to mass, or the mosques. Christmas just became the holiday we all agreed to have one meal without books or dice at the table; one special dinner on December twenty-fifth, and _invariably_ we would end up talking well into the night about Father’s latest expedition, or Mum’s poetry, or what I’d found in the Oxford libraries. Even Jonathan… _oh_ , that time you won that Persian figurine in a card game in Monaco, and Father made you promise to turn it in at the museum!” Evelyn laughed, softly. “It was the one holiday I was always able to take away from school, so it was the one holiday we were all together.” 

“So you don’t have anything against Christmas, but you… didn’t follow Christmas religiously either?”

“You know, he’s not wrong. I still can’t grasp why this silly little thing upsets you so much, old mum.”

“Jonathan--” There was another _scuff_ of paper being disturbed in quick scratches of pencil lead. “What’s this hieroglyph?”

“Well it’s not _amenophus_ , I do remember that much. That’s no stork.”

“It’s a _goose_ , Jonathan. The hieroglyph for ‘son’ is a goose. Which is also the hieroglyph _for ‘goose’_.” 

“... oh, so it is!”

“Ancient Egyptians had a _goose_ dinner for winter solstice. It was a harvest festival. They did not have a dinner to celebrate any _son_. It’s a ridiculous mis-translation that devalues the language, the religion, and the history to the rest of the world.”

“ _Ancient_ Egyptians, Evy. _Ancient_. Unless there’s another one of them up and cavorting about, which I dearly hope not, I don’t think they’re going to be very insulted.”

“Jonathan, we have literally stood in the presence of undead Egyptian mummies. You picked his pocket!”

“It was a loincloth, actually, but--”

“The point is _I’m_ offended, Jonathan! This article was poorly researched and poorly presented! This is my job! My field of study! We’ve lived this! Our family lived this! And to hand-wave it all like it was all some lesser civilization or a coincidence in passing is… is just… _ooooh!_ History isn’t _gone_! I shudder to think what Mum would say if I let some overstuffed academic insist it was all a footnote in the story of Christianity. It’s--” Evelyn sat heavily down in another chair, and the breath she let out--

Jonathan moved away from the windowsill, but Ardeth did not take his chance to retreat. The shake in Evelyn’s breath was not his business - _none_ of this was his business, really - but he stayed, and strained his ears to keep listening. 

“Don’t you remember what it was like when they died, Jonathan? All those ridiculous news articles about Tutankhamen’s curse? All that… that gossip?”

For once, Jonathan remained silent.

“Sweetheart,” Rick said, “we have quite literally survived an _actual_ ancient Egyptian curse.”

“It’s not the _same_! And until Ardeth appears in the middle of our foyer saying we’ve unleashed another apocalypse, Tutankhamen’s curse is hogwash used to discredit brilliant architects and encourage unsafe archaeological practices.”

Ardeth was not sure whether he should be relieved or deeply concerned.

“Jonathan, in Hamunaptra... we saw it, and touched it, and… and yes, we unleashed it but we also fixed it, and yet no one else _knows_ about it at all. And I’m a librarian! I’m _supposed_ to preserve stories. But I can’t write a paper on _actual_ effects of the _hom-dai_. I can’t present a thesis to the Bembridge scholars about the Book of Amun Ra. Certainly, the British Museum is all but crawling here themselves trying to have me share pieces from Hamunaptra, but on the same breath they hang on every word Sir Budge writes and send my own studies back for yet another peer review. It’s… it’s _unkind_ is what it is.”

“Not very Christmas at all, old mum.”

“And the worst part?” There was a sudden, quick sniff. “Oh, Jonathan, the worst part is that we can’t go tell Mum and Dad about it. We can’t go tell them about all the things we found and did. They would have understood. The Book of the Dead. Hamunaptra under the sand, hiding in the sunrise. Oh, Jonathan… all the stories Mum told us, all the theories Father had on Hamunaptra’s location. Could you imagine?”

“You know, I think I could.”

Oh, Ardeth did not want to, but the loss of Dr. Bey to the Med-jai tribe had left a significant silence in Ardeth’s personal counsel, and he could not in clear conscience say he did not understand Evelyn’s longing. The Med-jai’s sacred duty as bodyguards of Seti I had survived over a hundred generations in the form of oral histories, prayers, and songs, shared in strict confidence to only certain tribes and trusted brothers. The idea of having no one to tell, of stories with none but the dunes to hear, put a pang in his chest.

“I can imagine they’d be very proud of you saving the world.” Rick’s voice was such a low rumble that Ardeth could barely pick out the words, as if pressed into Evelyn’s hair. “Though I have no idea how you’re supposed to write a paper to the Cambridge scholars about that.”

“Bembridge scholars,” Evelyn corrected. “I think it _is_ me being against Christmas, a little. I didn’t even notice we’d missed it last year, out in the desert. And now… it’s just a few days until Christmas, and you know I miss them, Jonathan. More than I thought I still could. But when I see something so flippant as a newspaper article, it nearly feels like Hamunaptra and all the people that died there - the Americans, Dr. Chamberlin, Dr. Bey - it just might never have happened at all. Perhaps Christmas isn’t for us anymore. At least, not the way this ridiculous article paints it.”

“You really feel that way, Evelyn?”

“Sometimes.” A very small _clink_ , like two rings being nudged together. Evelyn sighed deeply, and the paper sighed in kind, set aside. “I’m sorry, Jonathan. It wasn’t your fault and I should not have got so cross. I know it’s ridiculous, but there it is. I’m all tangled up and I just can’t, for the life of me, think of something else to fill its loss.”

Beneath the windowsill, in the safety of the shadows, Ardeth slipped soundlessly back onto the street. 

\--

Showing great personal restraint, Ardeth stood squarely before the heavy wooden door on Shâri Muḥammad, and knocked. 

There was a shuffling of footsteps on the other side, a creak of weight on wooden floors, a muffled murmur and faint response, and then a metallic clunk of heavy locks being unlocked. Ardeth shivered at the rather unwelcome memory, but the door swung open to reveal a slightly wearied-looking but very obviously alive Rick O’Connell. 

It was odd to see O’Connell without bandolier and pistols, though as recognition dawned on his face and quickly rose to dread, he did reach instinctively for them under either arm and winced when he came up empty. He took in the sword at Ardeth’s belt, looked over Ardeth’s shoulder for either a horse or a shuffling horde of enthralled plague-bearers--

Then O’Connell blinked, frowned slightly, and pointed a finger loosely toward Ardeth’s chest. There was a plain ring on his left hand. “If something was rising from the sands to threaten the world, _again_ , you wouldn’t have bothered knocking.” 

Adreth did his best to look mildly affronted. “Of course I wouldn’t.” He hefted the burden off his shoulder and offered it over to O’Connell. “Here. I brought this for your home.”

“You… brought us a duck?” O'Connell stared at the plucked and trussed bird wrapped in canvas, still fresh from the marketplace and rubbed heavily with the local preference of spices. 

“A goose, actually.”

“I have to say this is a little different than the last tradition you told me about.” A thought struck O’Connell visibly. He glanced over at the office window, still slightly open to the cool evening air, then raised an eyebrow at Ardeth and waited.

“On the night of winter solstice,” Ardeth said stiffly, “it is an Ancient Egyptian tradition tradition to celebrate a meal with close friends.”

“With a goose.” The suspicious look faded from O’Connell’s face, replaced with a wry and grateful smile. “I think I might’ve heard of that one somewhere.”

**Author's Note:**

> A/N - Unbeknownst to Ardeth, Evelyn wakes up on December 22nd determined to go out and find an Egyptian treasure she can study and research, preferably one not being guarded by the Med-jai against a terrible curse. The rest is The Mummy Returns. 
> 
> A/N the second - Sir EA Wallis Budge was a very key figure in the foundations of Western study of Egyptology in the early 20th century, though his interpretations and translations tend to be considered wildly inaccurate, opinion-driven, and Eurocentric (among other things) by current scholars in the field. I like to think Evy was ahead of her time. And yes, his publication of Egyptian Language: Easy Lessons in Egyptian Hieroglyphics does include that homograph for 'goose' and 'son'. Be careful translating your cookbooks, folks!
> 
> A/N the third - And yes, that publication of the Cambridge Sentinel, Volume XXII, Number 19, from December 17, 1927 is completely real (and available online)… though it’s for Cambridge, Massachusetts, not Cambridge, England. I am taking a bit of liberty for this work of fiction, about a work of fiction, that canonically contains fictional undead Egyptian priests named for actual historical Egyptian architects. My apologies to Elmo Scott Watson.
> 
> Happy Yuletide!


End file.
